The First Slide

Contributed to the Stellar Winds project

Captain Anderson
stood calmly on the bridge of the Megellan,
a Stellar Explorer class vessel, and
observed as his crew responded with military precision to the unexpected
discovery currently visible on the holodisplay. The Magellan, the 4th of its class to slip spacedock since
8016, had been charting new systems for over 16 years. As its third captain,
Anderson was keenly aware of the risk involved with the mission of stellar
exploration. Most of what the crew encountered had never before been seen up
close. And this newest discovery, while quite spectacular, was no exception.

It resembled one
of the gravity diagrams from Einstein that officers were made to study in Basic
Stellar Physics. However, this one was real and in color. A shimmering silvery
sheen around the edges of what appeared to be a hole right in the fabric of
space disappeared into the hole, giving the impression of a tunnel. Tendrils of
color, pink and yellow and orange, played about the rim, giving the whole scene
an eerie feel.

Turning to his XO,
Commander Rain, who was hovering over the crewman at the science station, Anderson
asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

“Think so, Cap. Although
the readings are different than expected for a wormhole. Can’t find a gravity
signature here.”

“That is odd.
There should be a gravity reading. Extend the range of the sensors.”

The crewman
adjusted his controls for a moment, pointed at the screen, and said, “Same
result, sir. Nothing.”

The Captain turned
back to the holo and stared quietly, considering the situation. The ship was at
full stop, forty thousand kilometers from the perceived edge of the wormhole. With
no gravity signature, there was no way to tell how or where the ship would
react to the wormhole. Approach was risky, but that was the name of the game
out here.

Raising his head
to the quietly waiting crew, the Captain grinned as he calmly ordered, “Take us
in slowly to thirty thousand kilometers. Record all sensor data. Helmsman, if
you notice anything amiss, feel free to reverse thrust. Keep your eyes open,
people.”

With a growl from
the JT-4100 sublight drive, the massive vessel began inching its way toward the
wormhole. A slow approach over ten
thousand kilometers was a long maneuver, requiring over 3 hours. The crew watched
and waited in suspenseful silence. The only sounds on the bridge were the
faintly audible beeps and clicks from monitors and control boards. The wormhole
colors continuously shifted and crawled in the holodisplay. Only when the ship
was again at full stop did the crew relax and resume their normal breathing.

His grin broadening as he looked around the bridge,
the Captain asked, “Now that was fun, wasn’t it?”

The crew responded with smiles and grins. They were
used to the Captain’s approach to the dangers of their job. He had proven
himself a quick and creative thinker, and they trusted him.

After several long moments assessing the situation,
the Captain made his decision. “Let’s try another ten thousand.”

Once again the big ship crawled its way toward the
wormhole, inch by inch closing the distance.
Unexpectedly, the image in the holo changed- the ship’s forward section
began to glow red, indicating structural failure. The crewman at the sensor
station barked out, “Gravity spike, Captain. It’s pulling the front of the
ship…”

Before he could finish, the forward section of the
ship elongated toward the hole, stretching to perceived infinity. As the crew
on the bridge watched in frightened fascination, the forward bulkhead stretched
toward the hole, followed by the navigation station and its officer and crewmen.
Within a moment, the entire length of the ship had stretched to infinity and disappeared
into the wormhole.

On the bridge all was eerily silent. The normal sound
of activity and equipment was silenced, sucked away by the altered reality
within the worm-tunnel. The Captain could dimly make out one of the crew
vomiting on the deck, the cloud of spew stretching into infinity ahead of the
crewman. He vaguely comprehended his own thought that he had never seen spew do
that before.

There was no way to tell how long the slide actually
took as time itself seemed to be distorted. As suddenly as it began, it ended.
The infinite distance of the ship retracted in an instant, the Captain
involuntarily flinching as the forward bulkhead rushed back toward him. Alarms
were instantly sounding a myriad of tones, indicating a ship under dire stress.
Several of the crew were unconscious on the deck, two had vomited, one was
babbling incoherently, and the comm officer was crying under his console,
huddled in fear. The ship’s doctor, largely unaffected by the slide, appeared
on the bridge to administer sedatives and anti-nausea shots.

Once he had regained his bearings, the Captain ordered
the alarms silenced and detailed two crewmen to check the hull in the forward
sections where the damage was likely the worst. He rapidly pressed a few
controls for the holodisplay, calling up a star chart. The ship’s position was
plotted in the center of a 10000 lightyear diameter sphere, but the Captain was
unable to identify any of the nearby star clusters. Turning to the navigation
station and seeing only one crewman in place, he ordered Sol and the home
cluster be highlighted on the holo, along with a distance to their position.
The holo quickly zoomed out, showing a distance of 60000 lightyears across. Sol
was positioned to the far right, while the Magellan’s
position was shown to the far left. Flashing blue numbers showed the distance
to be 51968 lightyears between the two. The Captain’s mouth fell partway open
in disbelief. He turned to the crewman at navigation and ordered him to double
check their position. The same result appeared in the display.

Commander Rain, appearing at his side, voiced his
disbelief, “Can’t be right, Cap’n. That’s a trip of over 340 years for us.”

The Captain nodded, a bit uncertain of his next move.
He needed more information. He ordered all decks and stations to report their
status via comp-link. As reports began to come in, the situation became clearer.
Fully two-thirds of the crew were either disabled or unconscious, and the Magellan had suffered moderate
structural fatigue. Over half of the bridge crew was out of action, and the
ship’s systems were operating at only 65% efficiency.

Turning to the Commander, the Captain lowered his
voice. “We’ll need to go back through, or we’ll never make it home.” Rain
nodded.

The Captain called to the communication crewman,
“Comm, compose a message stating our position and situation, how we got here,
and the estimated travel time to return. Set it to transmit repeatedly for the
next hour. If we don’t make it back, I want someone to someday know what
happened to us.”

The next several hours were filled with rapid orders
and action. Most of the active crew were sent to strengthen the fatigued
structure, while several computer techs were put to work restoring systems as
best they could. The doctor managed to send a few crewmen and officers back to
work, but the bulk were still unfit for duty.

When all work was accomplished, the Captain posted the
skeleton bridge crew to their stations. He keyed the ship’s broadcast mic and
addressed the entire crew:

“All hands, this is Captain Anderson. You are all
aware of our situation and the risks involved in our mission. Unless we want to
die on a too-long return trip to Sol, we must attempt the wormhole slide one
more time. There are no guarantees here. The wormhole may not exit where we
want, or we may be destroyed within. Whatever happens, you are the finest crew
a Captain could have. Well done. See you on the other side.”

He released the mic and stood a moment in silent
reflection. The bridge was silent and motionless. Looking up and grinning
broadly, he quietly ordered, “Helm, ahead full.”

The massive JT-4100 rumbled to life one more time,
struggling under reduced power to move the big vessel toward the wormhole. The
crew knew to expect the slide at about 30000 kilometers from the edge of the
effect. Every breath seemed to be held during the long minutes of approach. At
31000 kilometers the nav officer began counting down every 100: “thirty-one
thousand…thirty thousand nine…thirty thousand eight…”

At 30000, every eye on the bridge turned toward the
forward bulkhead. Nothing happened. The Magellan
continued its slow crawl ahead.

Suddenly, the ship shuddered from stem to stern,
elongated from the inside out, and disappeared down the wormhole. Again the
eerie silence and slow-motion vision and perceived stoppage of time. Again it
ended suddenly, the ship retracting to its usual length in an instant. The
alarms sounded, a crewman vomited, and some of the crew blacked out, but they
had arrived.A quick nav check showed them to be back in the system where they
started, 31000 kilometers from the edge of the hole.

Captain
Anderson looked around the bridge at his rejoicing crew. “Now that was fun,
wasn’t it?”